Night-owl women not for long-term relationships: Study

Are you dating a night owl who loves to stay up late and wake up late in the morning?

Read this carefully as night owls, unlike early birds, are less likely to be in long-term relationships and have the same high propensity for risk-taking as men.

“Night owls, both males and females, are more likely to be single or in short-term romantic relationships versus long-term relationships when compared to early birds,” said study author Dario Maestripieri, a professor in comparative human development at University of Chicago.

In addition, male night owls reported twice as many sexual partners than male early birds, he added.

The link between the night-owl tendency and risky behaviour could have roots in evolutionary strategies for finding mates.

“From an evolutionary perspective, it has been suggested that the night-owl trait may have evolved to facilitate short-term mating, that is, sexual interactions that occur outside of committed, monogamous relationships,” Maestripieri explained.

It is possible that, earlier in our evolutionary history, being active in the evening hours increased the opportunities to engage in social and mating activities, when adults were less burdened by work or child-rearing.

The participants (110 males and 91 females) provided saliva samples to assess their levels of cortisol and testosterone.

The participants also described their own willingness to take risks and gave information about their sleep patterns.

Men had higher cortisol and testosterone levels than women.

But night-owl women had cortisol levels comparable to night-owl and early-morning men.

The study suggests high cortisol levels may be one of the biological mechanisms explaining higher risk-taking in night owls.

According to Maestripieri, preferences for being a night owl or early morning person are due in part to biology and genetic inheritance, but also can be influenced by environmental factors such as shift work or child-rearing.

Gender differences in sleep patterns emerge after puberty and become weaker or disappear after women reach menopause, Maestripieri noted in the study.

The link between the night-owl tendency and risky behaviour could have roots in evolutionary strategies for finding mates, Maestripieri said in the study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology.(IANS)

London: If you are in the middle of a failing relationship but still depend on it to make yourself feel good, don’t hang on. It may lead you to become an alcoholic, a study says.

When a person’s self-worth is tied to their romantic relationship, the effect of negative events or emotions is magnified.

When this happens, believing their partner is cheating can lead people to use alcohol to cope.

“We all feel jealousy to some degree. Many people are in relationships that are less than ideal and use alcohol for different reasons,” said lead researcher Dr Angelo DiBello from the University of Houston.

Romantic jealousy is a shared human experience but very little work has looked at how it is related to alcohol use, misuse and associated problems.

The team examined how different types of jealousy affect the link between depending on a romantic relationship for self-esteem and having alcohol-related problems.

They asked 277 people (87 percent female) about how dependent their self-esteem is on their romantic relationship, the satisfaction, commitment and closeness in their relationship, their jealousy and their alcohol use.

The results, published in the journal Addictive Behaviours revealed that people whose self-esteem relies on their relationship turn to alcohol to cope because of jealousy.

These results were especially true for people who are less satisfied, less committed, and report feeling more disconnected from their partners.

“Given how common jealousy and being in romantic relationships are, this work helps to explain different associations that may negatively impact an individual’s drinking,” said Dr DiBello.

“The results will also highlight the association between these factors and show how our emotions, thoughts, and behaviours are related in potentially harmful ways,” the authors said. (IANS)